OPINION: M’membe’s Socialist Project Could be the Beginning of the End

News that Fred M’membe has thrown his hat in the political ring is hardly surprising. Over the years M’membe has been active as any political animal in this country. He has remote controlled some politicians hiding under the banner of the now defunct Post Newspapers.

M’membe has used the cover of being a newspaper man to skin political opponents without any weaponry available to them to hit back. Inevitably M’membe suffered out of playing political games hiding behind the keyboard.

Now he has discovered that he has to face his political demons head on. Given what he has gone through with his beloved Post Newspapers closed it was always going to be a long fight before he could throw his last arrow.

He has used every imaginable defence mechanism from belting away propaganda, legal schemes and use of political surrogates like the now defunct Rainbow Party that amounted to nothing with Wynter Kabimba as the front.

M’membe has inevitably come to the only conclusion that he was always going to come that he has to do the bidding himself. However, very soon he will learn how hard it is to survive in politics. He will have to learn to survive innuendos and outright insults.

He has not been one to take criticism lightly despite having mastered the art of dishing it out to opponents over the years. Of course there is that awkward political obligation of dealing with hanger-on that regularly demand payment to champions your causes.

M’membe is not exactly one who deeps into his pockets that easily. Naturally he will have to endure the brunt of a highly slanderous media, a weapon he thrived although in litigiously measured fashion.

Now is when M’membe is going to learn that political life is far more different than just picking on political opponents behind the keyboard. How long he will survive could be only a matter posterity can judge.

Credit to him and his followers they could be the only party with an ideology. Socialism has certainly some following across the globe but as to its practicalities under the modern day political circumstances in Zambia is anybody’s guess.

We can only wish comrade Fred M’membe the very best on his new political journey that nature may have chosen for him. We could be wrong but this definitely has all the markings of the beginning of the end.